I know that The Amazing Randi offers one million dollars (which is now much larger because of other’s contributions) to anyone that will convince him of a paranormal event in a controlled setting, whether it be ESP, clairyonance, etc. Now I’m pretty hip to fallacies of logic, and know the secrets of enough magic tricks to see the potential weakness in most of these games. Ive also seen enough hoaxes exposed that were impressive but eventually were proved well… false. BUT, I’ve seen some displays that just defy everything save collusion amongst the participants. The first person I think of is The Amazing Kreskin. If he is in collusion with people, surely someone would have leaked it by now given the amount of people he would have had to be in collusion with over the years. Now I’m not talking about guessing the car that people have, or information that could be found through casual pre-show intelligence. I cant think of specific instances, but what comes to mind is his finding his paycheck for his gigs, even in huge buildings. Even if he has great intuition and could read subtle cues (ie. subconcious hot/cold cues) he still wouldnt be able to do it in that amount of time. So…besides the obvious answer, why hasnt someone collected that damn money?
At the risk of sounding snotty, KidCharlemagne, I don’t think you can say “besides the obvious answer” in this case, because in this case the obvious answer is probably the right one. Nobody has claimed the money because you can’t do the things these people claim to do without stacking the deck in your favor one way or another.
Sorry if that spoils the movie for any of you. 
Given that The Amazing Kreskin has not tried to claim Randi’s offer, my guess would be that Kreskin is aware that he is engaging in a trick, not a psychic enterprise. (Does Kreskin claim psychic powers outside his show? I have only seen a few TV performances and don’t follow him closely. I had not put him in the Uri Geller class of frauds.)
Thats not snotty by the way. I was hoping everyone would skip over that part. What I meant was there is no place for misdirection to occur, and even if I cant spot the actual misdirection, I can always understand when it occurred. I really doubt that Kreskin could be doing those things via misdirection or other tricks, and I find it nay impossible to believe that he has thousands of audience members on talk shows nationwide under collusion. And another point I’m trying to make, or rather understand is that While I can understand why there would be a debate whether psychic phenomenom is possible, I don’t understand why there is a debate about whether it has been achieved (consistently). Lets take one topic for instance that is still debated - ESP, you know those tests with the square, circle, and squiggly lines. I know there are no lies like statistics, but bottom line is either the results on say 300 people are significant or not. Isn;t there a government bureau to settle these matters? Where do my taxes go.
I’m reading a book by Randi called Faith Healers. In it he talks about how Televangelists use mentalist tricks to get information. He gives The Amazing Kreskin as an example as someone how does an act for entertainment purposes only, in contrast to the people who claim to have actual psychic powers. Kreskin doesn’t claim any powers, beyond the powers of observation.
If you want to find out how it is done, get a book on mentalism. I think you will find a rather mundane explanation for how it is done.
Of course, that should be, “someone who does an act for entertainment purposes only.” I’m so smart that I sometimes slip into writing in anagrams. 
Well, some of your taxes went to the CIA to try to make this actually work. (It would be handy to be able to exchange messages with someone in a hostile nation without having mail or radio messages intercepted.) After spending way to much money on it, the CIA came to the conclusion that the people proposing it were either true-believer-cranks or charlatans and gave it up as not real.
Two points to make about the card tests (anyone remember what those cards are called?):
First, by the usual definition of “statistically significant”, one in twenty trials will show “statistically significant” results, just by pure chance. If such tests have been done on 6,000 people, then you would expect about 300 to look real.
Second, there’s plenty of subtle ways to cheat on those tests. For instance, the back pattern on those cards generally isn’t quite symmetric. If the tester shuffles the cards such that all of the wavy lines and circles are right-side up, and all of the triangles and squares are upside-down, then the candidate can get a remarkable accuracy result by looking at the backs of the cards. There’s also tricks like looking at the reflections of the cards in a window or the tester’s glasses (my sister used to do this to me when playing Go Fish), or cold-reading the tester on hesitant guesses: I think it might be wavy lines… (tester looks disappointed) or a square… (tester continues to look disappointed) or, wait! I’ve got it! It’s a circle, right?
On the subject of folks like Kreskin, just because you, personally, can’t figure out how a magic trick was done, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a trick. Remember, when any stage magician performs an amazing feat, he does so under conditions he’s chosen and controlled, not conditions controlled by someone else. Many of the great magicians make it a point to remind the audience at every show that they are just tricks, and I still don’t know how many of them were done.
Those ESP cards are also known as Zenner cards.
Actually, Kreskin has come in for some criticism lately because he has been hinting he really does have some kind of psychic powers. I seem to recall a column in Skeptic or Skeptical Inquirer which reprinted and commented on an ad for a kit he was selling which would supposedly release people’s latent psychic powers.
I believe Kreskin says something like “I have MENTAL powers”. Obviously he can do things that most people can’t do, he’s an expert at cold reading, body language, and how people trick themselves into thinking they saw something that didn’t really happen. He doesn’t use collusion, there is no need for that. Just because you can’t explain it doesn’t mean he’s psychic.
He doesn’t come out and say “It’s all a trick”, but he never claims to have paranormal powers…just extraordinary powers. But they are skills anyone can cultivate.
Oh, and people HAVE looked at the results of thousands of card trials. Guess what? Under controlled conditions, the results are equivalant to chance. Next question?